Re: USAGE: Words for "boredom"

On Wednesday, June 19, 2002, at 02:53 , BP Jonsson wrote:

> At 19:56 2002-06-18 -0500, Thomas R. Wier wrote:
>
>> Quoting Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...>:
>>
>> > >     Or does Hawai'i not count as a pre-industrial society?
>> >
>> > Unless the term arose post-colonially, certainly it'd count as
>> > pre-industrial.
>>
>> Okay, so I did a search of the online Perseus dictionary of
>> Ancient Greek, and it came up with <alus> for boredom, which
>> seems also to have the flavor of "agitation".
Not merely the flavor - it is cognate with the verb _aluein_ (or _alyein_
according to how one prefers to transcribe upsilon/ ypsilon) "to agitate",
"to stir".

>> This should
>> be fairly conclusive that you can be preindustrial, and yet
>> have a word for "boredom".
Except that the word is of pretty rare occurrence in Greek, which could
well
be used as evidence that boredom was pretty rare among the ancient
Greeks.

It is difficult to think of a more commonly used word for "boredom" or for
"to be bored" in Ancient Greek.

> There is also Swedish _leda_, which shows all signs of being an Old Word
> --
> being derived by no-longer productive processes.
>
> Then of course you have Latin _taedium_.
Yes, indeed - and the impersonal verb _taedet_ "it bores", e.g.
taedet me uitae = I am bored with life (lit. it bores me of life)
me taedet sermonis tui = I am bored with your speech
etc,

Maybe it's something to do with urban living.

Ray.